New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and MP Jairam Ramesh on Saturday said that the electoral bonds are “pre-paid”, “post-paid” and “post-raid” bribes, through which the central government had given Rs.3.8 lakh crore in projects and contracts to private companies in exchange for Rs.2,004 crore in donations to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Addressing a press conference, the party repeated the its 2019 election manifesto promise to scrap the Electoral Bond Scheme and replace it with a National Elections Fund if it comes to power in 2024.

In its 2019 manifesto, the Congress promised to scrap the “opaque” Electoral Bonds Scheme and replace it with a National Election Fund, to which any person could contribute and from which funds would be collected at the time of elections to recognised political parties in accordance with criteria laid down by law.

Also Read: Jairam Ramesh takes ‘black money’ dig at BJP over electoral bonds data

The Congress also had said that it would ensure that EVMs and VVPATs were tamperproof and allocate “substantially more” free airtime on All India Radio and Doordarshan to recognised political parties in accordance with the criteria laid down by law.

Ramesh said that the ruling party used four routes to carry out the electoral bond scam. The first is ‘Chanda do dhandha lo’ [give donations and get business], the second route is ‘theka lo ghus do’, [take contracts and give bribes], the third is ‘hafta vasooli’ [extortion], and the fourth is the usage of shell companies, he added.

The BJP has patented this, Ramesh claimed. He said that the ED [Enforcement Directorate], CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] and the Income Tax [Department] were sent to the companies and to escape from them, these companies bought electoral bonds and gave donations to the BJP, Ramesh claimed.

Ramesh said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to shut shell companies within and outside the Parliament before 2014, but 16 shell companies donated Rs.419 crore to the BJP, out of Rs.543 crore donated by shell companies, according to the recently released electoral bond data.

“These included companies on a finance ministry high-risk watch list for money laundering, companies donating crores within months of their formation, and companies donating many multiples of their paid-up share capital,” he said.

“Rs.551 crore in donations were given to the BJP in exchange for Rs.1.32 lakh crores in contracts and project approvals that were provided by the Central or BJP state governments within three months after the donation….Rs.62,000 crore in contracts and project approvals were given by Central or BJP state governments, for which Rs.580 crore of postpaid bribe (in the form of electoral bonds) were given to the BJP within three months,” Ramesh claimed, as evidence of both “pre-paid” and “post-paid” bribery.

This would amount to 38 corporate groups allegedly receiving a total of Rs.3.8 lakh crore in projects and contracts in exchange for Rs.2,004 crores in electoral bonds donations to the BJP, he said.

Also Read: Congress calls electoral bond scheme biggest scam

The Congress leader also noted that 41 corporate groups had faced a total of 56 ED, CBI and IT raids and donated Rs.2,592 crore to the BJP, of which Rs.1,853 crore was given after the raids.

“The PM, who did not want to give MSP a legal status, have bribes legal status – electoral bonds,” Ramesh said and repeated the Congress’s demand for a Supreme Court-monitored inquiry into the allegations of corruption through the scheme and promised a Special Investigation Team (SIT) inquiry if INDIA bloc came to power in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

He also dismissed the SBI’s plea before the Supreme Court that it would require time until the end of June, by which time the Lok Sabha elections would have been conducted, to match the details of electoral bond donors with the parties they donated to.

Ramesh claimed that two young Congress workers had already produced a code which could complete this task, after the bank submitted all the details of electoral bonds, including their ‘unique alpha-numeric’ codes to the Election Commission on March 21.

“It took only three lines of Python code and less than 15 seconds to match the donors with political parties, exposing the brazen and ridiculous claim of the SBI that it would take months to provide the data asked by the Supreme Court,” the Congress leader claimed. He added that any citizen could do the same using the documents available on the ECI’s website and the code developed by its workers.

The Supreme Court had in February struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme as arbitrary and asked the SBI, which was responsible for issuing these anonymous bonds, to submit the details of all the donations made under this scheme to the Election Commission.

After its plea for an extension of the deadline for the submission of these bonds from March 12 to June 30 was denied by the Court, the bank submitted these details to the ECI, albeit in two separate lists – one with the details of the donors and one of the parties receiving these donations – without a unique code allowing them to be accurately on matched.

However, on the SC’s direction, the SBI submitted a second pair of lists, which now includes the ‘unique alpha-numeric’ details of the bonds to the ECI. This data is now publicly available on the Election Commission’s website, and the Congress claims that its allegations of corruption against the BJP are based on matching the details of the donors to those of the recipient political parties.